A new Dallas police team will begin regularly reviewing footage from cameras in police squad cars as a way to monitor how officers do their jobs.

Dallas is thought to be the first major police department to create a unit devoted to auditing dashboard camera video. The videos have played an increasingly crucial role in protecting officers falsely accused of wrongdoing, or proving misconduct when officers themselves are in the wrong.

“The community’s confidence in the police department is so precious and fragile,” Police Chief David Brown said. “Anything we can do to ensure that officers are doing what we expect is vital. It’s important to create trust and confidence that we will police ourselves.”

Policing experts lauded the creation of a DVR Review Team, while some officers, including the head of the city’s largest rank-and-file police officer association, are greeting the new reviews with skepticism.

Glenn White, president of the Dallas Police Association, said the new review procedures are simply more evidence of the department playing “Big Brother.”

“It’s definitely going to lead to witch hunts,” he said. The message it sends to officers is “to do the very bare minimum because if you go out there be a hardworking aggressive officer, you are going to get jammed up. You’re going to get disciplined for it.”

Sam Walker, a professor of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and the author of 11 books on policing, criminal justice and civil liberties, called the new review procedure a “wise proactive policy.”

“Any employer should know what your employees are doing,” Walker said. “The chief is to be commended for this. The message to the public is we care about you and want to provide the best quality service and we are taking steps to ensure that.”

The camera doesn’t lie, but some police officers and the people they meet on the streets sometimes do.

Police videos have grabbed national headlines such as footage from an incident in which a Dallas police officer berated an NFL player outside a hospital as his mother-in-law lay dying inside, or a more recent incident where officers now face criminal charges after apparently being caught on video beating a man.

The new unit will start with a sergeant and a senior corporal, reporting to Dallas police Lt. Chris Aulbaugh. Reviews will include incidents where there is a higher likelihood of administrative violations or misconduct, such as police chases, resisting arrest cases, situations in which a prisoner has been injured, and when Tasers are used.

Officers who have been placed in the department’s early intervention program for repeated misconduct will receive extra scrutiny. And rookie officers will be subject to additional reviews for six months after they complete their field training.

“We want to make sure that they are applying the training properly and to see whether we need to adjust something in our training processes,” said Deputy Chief Randy Blankenbaker, Brown’s chief of staff.

If Aulbaugh’s team finds potential administrative misconduct, those allegations will be referred to internal affairs. Conduct that could potentially be criminal will be sent to the department’s public integrity unit. Police will also identify areas where they can improve training or safety practices.

“You’ve got to make sure you’re being fair to everybody, but you’ve also got to make sure that you’re making it of value to the department,” Aulbaugh said. “As we look at these, we’re looking for opportunities for improvement. So if along the way, we spot behaviors that could discredit the officer or the department, we are going to deal with it. If we find behaviors that could bring credit to the department, we’re going to commend those people.”

Patrol supervisors have long been required to review footage of the officers assigned to them, but the department didn’t have any parameters about how often that should occur. Recently, the department revised its policy to require them to review footage from each of their officers at least twice a month.

Geoffrey Alpert, a University of South Carolina criminologist, said despite the fears of some rank-and-file police officers, many times dash-cam videos exonerate officers of misconduct.

“I think there’s an impression that if you look at 100 of them, you’re going to find a bunch of misconduct,” he said. “But the most recent research I’ve seen shows that officers are doing the right thing at the right place at the right time.”

In two recent cases, squad car videos played an important part in clearing officers of misconduct, Blankenbaker said.

In May 2010, a man claimed that an officer violently and roughly dragged him out of his car. But the dash-cam footage showed that simply didn’t happen.

A few months later, a man claimed that an officer checked his pocket for drugs. “The mobile video recording shows the officers conducted a pat down search but it does not show him reaching into his pockets,” Blankenbaker said.

Police commanders plan to brief the Dallas City Council’s Public Safety Committee about the new reviews on Tuesday. The new unit begins its work this week.

But the new review policy comes at a time when the department continues to put new patrol cars into service without the installation of dashboard cameras because of delays in selecting a new camera vendor. About 200 new squad cars without cameras have been added to the patrol fleet, which currently numbers about 900 cars.

In January, the Dallas City Council approved a five-year, $8.4 million contract with a new vendor. Officials expect to begin again installing cameras in the cars in the coming months.